Coco vs Clay: which job each does, and how they work together

Clay and Coco do different jobs. Clay is GTM data infrastructure: it finds and enriches accounts and contacts from 150+ data providers, runs waterfalls and AI research agents, and launches plays from tables. Coco is an approval-first AI co-worker that does the work around that data: research briefs, outreach drafts, meeting prep and CRM updates. Coco integrates with Clay, so many teams run both.

Facts checked 2026-11-03 against Clay's site (opens in a new tab), pricing page (opens in a new tab), Sequencer page (opens in a new tab), global agent page (opens in a new tab) and MCP page (opens in a new tab). Vendors change pricing and features often; check their site for current figures.

We make Coco, so read this as a partner's view, not a neutral one. Clay is one of Coco's integrations, and the honest answer for most teams already on Clay is to keep it. This page is for the other question buyers ask: if you are a small team, do you need Clay, Coco, or both?

Apply for the beta → · Private beta · free with your own API keys, or a paid plan

What Clay is, in its own framing

Clay describes itself as infrastructure. Its homepage (opens in a new tab) leads with "Build systems to grow revenue" and "Infrastructure to get any data, run agentic workflows, and launch GTM plays," and says it is "Trusted by more than 500,000 leading GTM teams of all sizes."

The product splits into four layers on Clay's own menu:

• Data. A data marketplace ("One contract to buy data from 200+ data and AI vendors in Clay's marketplace"), waterfall enrichment that combines providers for coverage, Audiences that centralize first- and third-party data, and signals such as job changes and promotions.
• Agents. Claygent, which Clay's pricing page (opens in a new tab) calls "Clay's AI agent with access to web research," plus account agents and a new global agent.
• Orchestration. Workflows you build "on a visual canvas" with "clicks, code, or chat," reusable functions, and a CLI and API for building from a coding agent.
• Activation. Ad audiences synced to LinkedIn, Meta and Google, and the Clay Sequencer (opens in a new tab) for cold email, which includes buying inboxes and domains without leaving Clay.

The design center is clear: Clay is where a GTM team gets any data point it can imagine, at scale, and turns it into plays. Its homepage puts it plainly: "GTM engineers build on Clay."

Where Clay is the right call

Honest section. Clay is the right call when:

• Data coverage is the job. If you need TAM sourcing, multi-provider waterfalls or niche data points no single provider has, Clay's marketplace and Claygent (opens in a new tab) are built for exactly that. Coco does not run a data marketplace; it uses Clay, Apollo, ZoomInfo and the public web as sources.
• You have someone who builds. Clay rewards a GTM engineer or ops lead who designs tables, columns, conditional logic and scoring. The output is a system your whole team can reuse.
• You run high-volume outbound or ads from your data. Clay's Sequencer handles sending infrastructure and lead-specific AI copy, and its ad syncs push audiences to LinkedIn, Meta and Google. Coco drafts outreach into your Gmail Drafts for approval; it does not buy domains or run ad audiences.
• You need enterprise controls now. Clay's pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists SSO/SAML, SCIM provisioning, IP allowlists and role-based access control on its Enterprise plan.

If your list building already runs on Clay, keep it. Clay also runs a lot of the work after the list exists, from research agents to the Sequencer. The rest of this page is about when a small team would rather hand that work to a co-worker it approves step by step than build it as plays.

Where Coco is the right call

Clay automates research, prep and follow-ups too, through plays you build and its agents; its homepage (opens in a new tab) lists rep productivity among its use cases. Coco is the right call when you want that follow-through as ready-made workflows you run from a chat, without building the plays first.

The work after the data, pre-built. Coco ships about twelve GTM workflows: research accounts, enrich contacts, draft cold outreach, automate follow-ups, prep sales meetings, clean CRM data, reactivate stalled deals, route leads and more. You describe the goal in chat, Coco proposes a plan with a credit estimate, and you approve it. You do not design the workflow first.

Output where your team already works. Clay pulls context across tools too: its Claygent page (opens in a new tab) says a Claygent with account context synthesizes data from your CRM, data warehouse and Gong calls. Coco's version is a co-worker that works across HubSpot, Salesforce, Gmail, Google Calendar, Apollo, LinkedIn, Clay, Outreach and Slack, and hands back finished work: a pre-meeting brief from your CRM, calendar and Clay tables, drafts in Gmail Drafts, CRM updates queued for approval.

Approval on every customer-facing action. Coco is approval-first by design: a hard, no-bypass floor on sends, CRM writes and Slack posts in every workflow. Once a workflow has proven itself, you can let it run on its own inside the guardrails you set, with every step logged. Clay offers approval too: its Sequencer (opens in a new tab) posts reply follow-ups to Slack "for reps to approve or edit before sending," its Account Agents write to the CRM as "Automatic (human-approved)," its MCP lets Ops "centrally control CRM write-backs," and its global agent (opens in a new tab), in beta, "asks before anything consequential happens." Coco's difference is that one floor covers every customer-facing action in every workflow and cannot be switched off.

A price a founder can expense. Coco's Founder plan is $40 a month with 5,000 credits, and the Hobby plan is free with your own API keys once your beta application is approved. Each plan card shows the credit cost before you approve.

How Clay and Coco work together

Clay builds and enriches the list; Coco turns it into work you approve. Connect Clay to Coco and Coco reads the tables you have already built, pulls Clay-enriched fields into its workflows, and can route a new enrichment through Clay when Clay is the sharper source.

A typical split for a small team:

The two products bill separately. On Coco's side, pulling a Clay-enriched record into a workflow costs about 1-2 credits; Clay's pricing page (opens in a new tab) bills platform work in Actions, and data and AI from its marketplace vendors in Data Credits. The Coco + Clay integration page covers the connection and the approval gate on each action type.

Clay and Coco side by side

Pricing: Clay vs Coco for a small team

Clay's pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists four plans, as of 2026-11-03. Free includes 500 Actions and 100 Data Credits a month, unlimited seats and tables, waterfalls and Claygent, and up to 200 rows per table. Launch starts at $185 a month ($167 a month billed annually) with 2,500 Data Credits and 15,000 Actions a month, phone enrichment, signals and up to 50,000 rows per table. Growth starts at $495 a month ($446 a month billed annually) with 6,000 Data Credits and 40,000 Actions a month, and adds CRM auto-sync, HTTP API and webhooks. Enterprise is custom with an annual commitment. Clay says Data Credits buy data and AI from vendors in its marketplace and Actions measure the platform work, that bringing your own API keys skips Data Credits, and that an enrichment with no result costs nothing.

Coco's pricing: Hobby $0 a month, free with your own API keys once your beta application is approved; Founder $40 a month with 5,000 credits plus top-ups; Team custom with pooled credits and admin audit. Typical costs are about 1-2 credits per record enriched, 4-6 credits per outreach draft and about 8 credits per pre-meeting brief. See Coco's pricing → and our credits vs seats explainer.

A Clay credit and a Coco credit are not the same unit, and the products do different work, so a dollar-for-dollar comparison misleads. The practical question is what you need first. A founder who needs 50 well-researched accounts and drafted first touches a week can start on Coco alone. A team that enriches thousands of contacts a month and syncs them to the CRM is on Clay's home ground, and can add Coco for the follow-through.

What each needs from you to set up

Clay's main path is building. You choose the data providers, build the tables and waterfalls, write the Claygent prompts and decide where the output goes, by clicks, code or chat on its canvas. Clay supports that with a skills library, a University and cohort classes, and the result is a reusable system. Once Ops has built workflows, reps can run them in natural language from their AI tools through Clay's MCP (opens in a new tab). Its global agent (opens in a new tab), opening "to a small group of Clay users first," goes further: "You set the goal, Clay builds the play."

Coco asks you to connect your tools and approve. You connect HubSpot or Salesforce, Gmail, your calendar and, if you have it, Clay. You describe the goal ("find 10 fintech design partners and draft first touches for the top 5"), Coco proposes a plan card with the steps and the credit estimate, and you approve each customer-facing step as it comes up.

When to pick which

Pick Clay if:

• Your bottleneck is data coverage: TAM, contact data, signals, niche data points.
• You have a GTM engineer or ops lead who wants to build reusable data systems.
• You send high-volume outbound or run ad audiences from your data.

Pick Coco if:

• Your bottleneck is follow-through: research, drafts, meeting prep, CRM hygiene.
• You want every customer-facing action approved by default, in every workflow.
• You are a founder or small team without someone to build plays, and want the workflows already defined.
• You want to start at $0 with your own API keys or $40 a month.

Use both if:

• Clay is your source of truth for enrichment and list building.
• Coco reads those Clay tables and does the work around them, from first draft to CRM update.

Still comparing AI co-workers for that second layer? See Coco vs Lindy → for a general-purpose AI teammate, or Viktor alternatives → for the Slack-native options.

Get started

If your Clay tables are doing the enrichment work but the data stops there, connect Clay to Coco and hand it one concrete workflow: research the top ten accounts in a table, or draft first touches for the best five. See whether the output earns the next job.

Apply for the beta → · Private beta · free with your own API keys, or a paid plan

Or see how the Coco + Clay integration works →, or book a walkthrough call → (opens in a new tab).